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BitCoins for dummies. How to get started with them?

MannDude

MannDude

Just a dude
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Yeah, I know there are tons of resources available to explain this to me... but not on vpsBoard!

I just want to own BitCoins, buy them, sell them, and purchase things with them. Imagine I know nothing and just discovered them today (not true, but lets dumb this down as much as possible). How would I get started?
 
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perennate

New Member
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Download and install a BitCoin client. apt-get install bitcoin-qt
 
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kaniini

kaniini

Beware the bunny-rabbit!
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MannDude said:
Yeah, I know there are tons of resources available to explain this to me... but not on vpsBoard!

I just want to own BitCoins, buy them, sell them, and purchase things with them. Imagine I know nothing and just discovered them today (not true, but lets dumb this down as much as possible). How would I get started?
Click to expand...
Easy way: Just go to blockchain.info and make a wallet.  Create an address pair for your cold storage, then remove it from the wallet and store it somewhere safe.  Hope that blockchain.info really removes keys from the wallets.  (Well, they should, because it is just a binary blob on their servers.  Someone should audit their JavaScript though.)

Hard way: Install the bitcoin client, wait for it to sync etc.  Create an address pair for your cold storage, then remove it from the wallet and store it somewhere safe.

Then to get coins... you can use #bitcoin-otc.  There's people who will trade them for paypal there.  Or you can use an exchange and deal with all of that nonsense.

Then buying stuff .. look for vendors which accept bitcoins.  They will give you a bitcoin address associated with the invoice or order.  Once you pay, it will be processed like any other method.  The amount of delay will depend mostly on two things:

  1. Whether or not they use a third-party "proxy" service.  These listen on the blockchain for payments and forward them on automatically to a hot or cold wallet, with an IPN-like callback.  This is how Tortoise processes bitcoin payments.  Delay is usually 10-20 minutes at most.
  2. If they do not process payments directly, things like BitPay potentially add additional delays (up to a day or two).  I do not have much experience with that.  All of my bitcoin trading has been direct.
 
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lifetalk

New Member
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Kaniini has already explained on how to start with a bitcoin wallet (cold/hot storage). If you're looking into acquiring the coins, there's various exchanges you can use. 2 of the exchanges I frequent, mostly, are Mt.Gox and BTC-E. Mt.Gox currently, apparently, only supports deposits/withdrawals via bank transfers (wire, SEPA, etc). So with them, you have to jump certain verification hoops and such.

BTC-E, on the other hand, has support for a lot of e-currencies, most of those are not truly international but rather cater to specific countries and such. But overall, nice system. I use OKPay quite frequently, so for me BTC-E works well. Add to the fact that there's a difference in bitcoin rates too.

Previously, Mt.Gox had support for OKPay payments (deposits/withdrawals). They don't now. But when they did, I made quite a bit in arbitrage from BTC-E/Mt.Gox due to a large difference in trading rates across the two exchanges. Now, with Mt.Gox only supporting wires, it's not as efficient or cost-effective.
 
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BuyCPanel-Kevin

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Khan Academy has a few video tutorials on it that were very helpful to me! If you want to get started look them up on youtube, there is simply too much information to list in one comment here.
 
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Ivan

Active Member
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This video is good. It is short, an it explains the concept of BitCoin and how it works in a very simple-to-understand method.



On the other hand, when it comes to spending BitCoins, there are sites like SpendBitCoins, where you can lookup sites to spend your BitCoins on, and BitCoinStore which is supposedly a site that sells electronics. There's even a site called useBitcoins which also lists online services that accept BitCoins, but also lists real-world stores that does so. 

I've personally seen an electronic store in Singapore which accepts BitCoin :D
 
jarland

jarland

The ocean is digital
Been mining a bit lately as well. Joined a pool because my equipment sucks. Mostly just trying to learn as well. I figure it's time I understand how this works too. Then I started mining namecoins, read about what they are, then realized every description was written for someone who already knows what they are. A lot of this crap was written for people who already know something about it.


Dollars are simpler.
 
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Ivan

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jarland said:
Been mining a bit lately as well. Joined a pool because my equipment sucks. Mostly just trying to learn as well. I figure it's time I understand how this works too. Then I started mining namecoins, read about what they are, then realized every description was written for someone who already knows what they are. A lot of this crap was written for people who already know something about it.


Dollars are simpler.
Click to expand...
Any success with mining?
 
jarland

jarland

The ocean is digital
Ivan said:
Any success with mining?
Click to expand...
I turned my focus to litecoin and it seems more likely to actually get results from CPU mining and light GPU mining. Earning about 0.01 per day without putting much effort into it. Fun to learn, makes me feel better about putting effort into it if I choose to.
 
mitgib

mitgib

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jarland said:
I turned my focus to litecoin and it seems more likely to actually get results from CPU mining and light GPU mining. Earning about 0.01 per day without putting much effort into it. Fun to learn, makes me feel better about putting effort into it if I choose to.
Click to expand...
I was mining with my AMD Radeon 55XX until I got it so hot the card failed, the end was blued it was so hot :(  FInally received my Butterfly BitForce SC and took the time to get it online yesterday, 0.02097002 earned in the ~14 hours it's been online

bfgminer version 3.2.1 - Started: [2013-11-13 17:04:11] - [  0 days 14:49:17]

 [M]anage devices [P]ool management ettings [D]isplay options  [H]elp [Q]uit

 Connected to stratum-lb-usa48.btcguild.com diff 32 with stratum as user mitgib_

 Block: ...b7a67351 #269580  Diff:511M ( 3.66Ph/s)  Started: [07:44:43]

 ST:3  F:0  NB:118  AS:2  BW:[ 59/ 51 B/s]  E:253.73  U:25.9/m  BS:6.65M

 1/16   73.0C | 61.85/59.59/58.96Gh/s | A:23014 R:127+11(.54%) HW:1137/.15%

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 BFL 0: 73.0C | 60.19/59.59/58.97Gh/s | A:23016 R:127+11(.53%) HW:1137/.15%
 
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Lanarchy

New Member
Aldryic C said:
0,02$?  The math on that comes out to 0,0014978585714286$ an hour - or roughly 13,12$ a year.  Does that even cover the extra cost in power to mine in the first place? o_O
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0.02 Bitcoin. Or roughly $8 at the current exchange rate.

Those specialized hardware pieces, or ASIC, do cover the cost of electricity. They probably won't make an overall profit. Considering youcan pay 10 bitcoin for a device, you won't see 10 bitcoin in the long run from mining.

Even the USB sticks at 0.2 bitcoin probably will not mine 0.2 bitcoin in their lifetime.

At this point, mining is generally unprofitable. The best way to get into bitcoin, wether for profit or for fun, is to buy them with $$$. The same amount of $ spent on buying bitcoins themselves will be more profitable than buying the same amount of $ worth of hardware and mining them

At this point, mining is generally unprofitable. The best way to get into bitcoin, wether for profit or for fun, is to buy them with $$$. The same amount of $ spent on buying bitcoins themselves will be more profitable than buying the same amount of $ worth of hardware and mining them
 
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mitgib

mitgib

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Aldryic C said:
0,02$?  The math on that comes out to 0,0014978585714286$ an hour - or roughly 13,12$ a year.  Does that even cover the extra cost in power to mine in the first place? o_O
Click to expand...
0.02~ BTC, I bought the unit in Feb of this year, it was delivered Oct 4th, so yeah, was a pre-order nightmare for all who were suckered into it.  They were so late on delivery the cost of opportunity lost is massive, but I did look at eBay yesterday and they seem to be trading at a small premium to a small loss, so if I choose, I can at least get out even.  Hell, 1/2 of the funds to buy Highspeedweb was from bitcoin profit, or profit from bitcoin stocks, so if I take this miner as a total loss, I'm still way ahead.
 
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